Sometimes I write a short piece starting from a writing prompt. One of those prompts was “A whisper on the stairs”. As an additional challenge, I decided to write 2 different short pieces on that same prompt. Following is the second one.

Sometimes I write a short piece starting from a writing prompt. One of those prompts was “A whisper on the stairs”. As an additional challenge, I decided to write 2 different short pieces on that same prompt. Following is the first one.

A whisper on the stairs. (1)

Harmony ran down the stairs as fast as she could. “Argh, this drives me crazy!” she exclaimed, bolting into the living room with her hands over her ears. “Why can’t anyone DO something about it?”

Melody and Reed looked up at their sister. Reed shrugged and did not feel the need to answer Harmony. This was old, very old, and never got them anywhere.

Cadence shook her head and made her harp screech, while Sonata didn’t react at all.

Harmony sat down and looked annoyed. “And my room is up there,” she complained, not compensating the serenity that had run out of the room as she had run in.

Melody sighed. “My room is up there too. Don’t get so worked up about it, sis. We all knew that we could expect this. We were warned when we bought this house? Remember that man who told us about it being haunted and stuff like that? We laughed at it. We laughed even harder when we heard how cheap the house was. Now we know why. So get yourself together, for God’s sake.”

Harmony looked angrily over the cushion she held in front of her. “I know, I know, but that doesn’t make me like this. Why is it me that the ghost always tries to grope?”

Reed put down his book about Mozart. “That is indeed a bit of a worry, Harmony. But he only pinches your bottom, nobody sees the blue spots there.”

The cushion flew and landed in his face. “Don’t give me that, Reed. It’s not my fault I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Not your fault, but clearly your problem,” Reed calmly stated as he put the cushion next to him.

Melody glanced at her sister. “Maybe we should try and talk to it.”

“Talk to it?” Harmony stared at Melody. “Are you nuts, Mel? Come on, I hit Reed in the face with the cushion, not you.”

Cadence put her harp to the side and said she was going up to the kitchen. “Anyone want something from there? Coffee, orange juice?”

Sonata nodded without taking her eyes from the Top Gear magazine she was reading. She always did. And so she always got the wrong thing to drink, but that was no one’s problem except hers.

Cadence shrugged, then left. Harmony started talking about the new song she was going to sing soon, when their sister cried out from the hall. The other siblings, even Sonata, stormed through the door, to see Cadence halfway up the stairs, clutching her skirt around her knees. She screamed again as something clearly tried to pull her skirt, then her blouse.

Reed ran up the stairs, put an arm around Cadence’s shoulders and guided her down. “See, nothing’s wrong, dear sister.”

Harmony and Melody looked at each other. Nothing wrong, my ass.

Sonata helped Reed to get Cadence back into the room, so the other two went up to the kitchen and returned with the coffee and the juice.

Then Melody sat up. “I have an idea. Harmy, come with me. I need you for that.”

Harmony growled. She hated to be called Harmy, but followed Mel out of the room anyway. The two were gone for quite a while, and when they returned they grinned and giggled.

Harmony rubbed her behind before she sat down, but looked smug.

“Reed, can you go up the stairs and see if the windows there are closed?” Melody asked their brother. “It looks like rain’s coming.”

Reed sighed as he put down his book. “Mozart will never forgive you,” he declared. Then he left the room.

“Mozart’s problem,” Harmony said.

“What did you do out there?” Cadence asked. “The ghost attacked me, it really did. I swear.”

“We know,” Melody nodded, “that is why we went up the stairs. And there we whispered.”

“You what?” Even Sonata looked up.

Before Melody could answer, a loud alarming cry came from the hall. It sounded very much like Reed.

The three sisters left the room and found their brother doubled over on the landing, halfway up the stairs. The spot where they had been ‘handled’ by the ghost.

“He grabbed my balls!” Reed kept yelling, “he grabbed my balls!”

“Looks like it worked,” Harmony grinned. She and Melody did a high-five.

Sometimes I write a short piece starting from a writing prompt. One of those prompts was “spare parts”. The next short piece is what resulted from that prompt.

The ring.

Priscilla visited her friend, the gadget-maker. His name was Magdanovitch. Mags, for friends.

“Mags, you should clean up here. It still looks like a junk yard here.” Priscilla ran her finger over a table; her action left a clear line on the table and a dark grey stain on her finger.

“Cleaning up here is lethal. This entire place is my spare parts box,” Magdanovitch stated.

“You always say that.” Priscilla moved through the “spare parts box” and picked up a ring from a table laden with objects large and small. The ring was a simple golden affair with a nearly illegible inscription. “What’s this?”

“That? Oh, an invisibility ring I made. But it malfunctions.” Mags rummaged in a box and barely glanced at his friend. Priscilla was not bothered by that, it was typically Mags.

She wondered how a ring could malfunction though, so she slipped it on her finger. Immediately the entire room and everything in it became a grey, shapeless blur. No more table next to her, no more Magdanovitch and no box. She saw herself, her extended hand and the finger, but everything else had become a dull nothing.

“Mags?” Priscilla barely heard her own voice. It was as if she was talking inside a ball of cotton. “Magdanovitch?” There was no response. She called her friend’s name, as loud as she could, but it made no difference. She shrugged and took the ring from her finger. Immediately everything was normal again, down to the smudge on her finger.

“I see what you mean,” the girl said. She stared at the inscription one more time, before she tossed the ring back on the table. Then she looked for something to clean her finger with. “It’s probably a slip in the writing.”

“Yeah, that was my idea too,” Mags nodded. “That, or I used some crap gold. Come, I’ll fix us some tea. I have scones too.”

“Not the ones from last time, I hope?” Priscilla asked as she followed Mags to the door. Her last visit had been several weeks ago.